How timing affects your workflows
How wait actions affect workflow timing
Timing plays a critical role in how your workflows behave. Understanding how Wait action work, especially in relation to conditions, helps you control when actions happen and which customers receive them.
Time between steps
Wait action in a workflow are cumulative. Each wait action adds to the total duration before the next step is executed.
Examples
After a product is back in stock, you may want to follow up with customers over several days:
Trigger: Product Restock
Send Back-in-Stock Email
Add a Wait action: 24 hours
Send Follow-up Email
Add another Wait action: 3 days
Send a Second Follow-up Email to encourage purchase
In this case:
First delay: 1 day
Second delay: 3 days
Total time before the last email: 4 days
Each wait action extends the workflow's overall timeline.
Wait action with conditions
Conditions split customers into two branches: True and False. A key thing to understand is that conditions are evaluated at a specific point in time (point-in-time evaluation).
Suppose you have a condition:
Order count = 0 (over all time)
True → Customer has never purchased
False → Customer has purchased before
While a customer is in the workflow, they can place an order at any time. So the moment when the condition is evaluated determines which branch they enter.
If you add a Wait action before a condition, customers will wait until the delay is over before the condition is checked.
Why place a Wait action before a condition?
Conditions can evaluate:
If your condition depends on a customer action, you should give them enough time to perform that action before checking the condition.
Adding a Wait action before the condition ensures the evaluation happens at the right moment.
Best practices when using the Wait action
If you plan to send emails in both the True and False branches, we generally recommend:
✅ Send the email immediately after the condition
❌ Do not add a Wait action right after the condition
Why?
Once a condition is evaluated, the customer is assigned to a branch based on their status at that moment.
If you add a Wait action after the condition, the customer’s data may change during the wait period, meaning they might no longer meet the criteria of the branch they are in.
Sending the message immediately ensures:
The message matches the customer’s current status
The workflow logic remains accurate and predictable
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